Posted on 04/23/2018 8:12:33 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Researchers have long wondered about the composition of the clouds high up in Uranus' sky — specifically, whether they're dominated by ammonia ice, as at Jupiter and Saturn, or by hydrogen sulfide ice. The answer has proved elusive, because it's tough to make observations with the required detail on distant Uranus. (Not only are Jupiter and Saturn closer to Earth, they have also hosted dedicated orbiter missions. Uranus has been visited just once — a brief flyby by NASA's Voyager 2 probe in January 1986.)
Irwin and his colleagues studied Uranus' air using the Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS), an instrument on the 26-foot (8 meters) Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. NIFS scrutinized sunlight reflected from the atmosphere just above Uranus' cloud tops — and spotted the signature of hydrogen sulfide.
"Only a tiny amount remains above the clouds as a saturated vapor," study co-author Leigh Fletcher, from the University of Leicester in England, said in the same statement. "And this is why it is so challenging to capture the signatures of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide above cloud decks of Uranus. The superior capabilities of Gemini finally gave us that lucky break."
Neptune's clouds are likely similar to those of Uranus, the researchers said. The big difference between the clouds of these two "ice giants" and those of Jupiter and Saturn probably trace to the worlds' formation environments: Uranus and Neptune coalesced much farther from the sun than the two gas giants did.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
My wife keeps blaming me for the dog’s gas............................
Your linky no go to source.
Uranus is sh@thole planet, everone knows that.
This is not news.
It sure is a pretty blue though.
Myanus smells like flowers and peach cobbler.
More like roses, or so I’m told.
What was it supposed to smell like?
I try to keep it clean, but it’s a losing battle. I’m sorry!
Wow.
Don’t know how I botched the link, but it is very botched.
I was going to make a ribald 69 pun but I’ll refrain
Some help fixing the links?
Here’s the REAL link:
https://www.space.com/40374-uranus-clouds-smell-rotten-eggs.html
Do you have a source link? Thanks.
It is in post #34.
I knew this thread was going to be scatological, sophomoric, and stupid.
That’s why I’m here.
I wish I knew some 7th grade boys I could forward this article to.
Annnddd, away we go!!!
Well, f'Petessake, nobody does interstellar exploration without a jacket.
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